Under ‘mass recovery program’
DOH airs 40k new COVID 19 recoveries
A few days ago, the Department of Health announced 40, 397 new COVID-19 recoveries, a result of what has been coined as the department’s ‘mass recovery program’.
However, this has not been the first time that a steep rise of recoveries in a single day was noticed in DOH’s COVID-19 bulletin.
A few weeks prior to the August 16 announcement, the said department tallied 37, 166 recoveries in July 30, after the DOH implemented a “time-based recovery” for COVID-19 patients.
According to the DOH, the surge in the number of recoveries was attributed to enhanced data reconciliation efforts with local government units through “Oplan Recovery.”
Time-based recovery
In this recovery strategy, COVID-19 patients who are mild and asymptomatic will be counted as recoveries after the completion of the 14-day isolation period from the time that they have tested positive for the virus.
According to the department’s Undersecretary, Maria Rosario Vergeire, this strategy has been based on scientific evidence and is now being implemented in different countries.
“‘Pag nakita ng physician na na-resolve ang symptoms we can already classify [patients] as clinically recovered,” she added.
‘WHO-backed’?
The criteria followed by DOH is based on a practice called by the World Health Organization (WHO) and United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as “symptoms-based strategy” for releasing COVID-19 patients from Isolation.
A recent article published in Science Media Center states that a person can be contagious even two days before the symptom onset, and its infectivity rate peaks one to two days after.
However, infectiousness significantly decreases eight days after the onset of the symptoms.
With this, and later developments in understanding the virus, researchers were able to recommend that patients who contracted the virus can safely be discharged after 10 days of symptom onset, and at least three additional days of not showing any symptoms, without the need of RT-PCR testing.
On replacing the original criteria
Initially, WHO required patients to be clinically recovered, and to have two negative RT-PCR results on sequential samples taken at least 24 hours apart. Basic requirements however caused prolonged viral shedding around the limit of detection, having negative results followed by positive results. This has unnecessarily challenged trust in the laboratory system.
The goal of the “symptoms-based strategy” was to provide an alternative to the initial “test-based criteria” in areas where testing capacity is insufficient to meet the initial guidelines set by WHO.
The new guideline is seen to be beneficial for the Philippines, who, as of this moment, has only roughly 90 testing centers to accommodate the 109 million Filipino population.
But this new policy has widely shifted public trust on how the Department of Health handles critical COVID-19 data.
In light of the recent criticisms thrown at the department, it has committed to announce its time-based recovered patients more frequently, every Sunday, in contrast to the initial announcement schedule set every 15 days.
“Gagawin ‘yan natin para hindi tayo nagbu-bulk palagi ng announcement,” Undersecretary Vergeire remarked.
As of August 20, the Philippines recorded 4,339 new cases, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases to 178,022.
